America. A history

During the eighteenth century the Brazilian people began to estimate more justly than they had done before the elements of national greatness which surrounded them, and to perceive how unreasonable it was that a country almost as large as Europe should remain in contented dependence on one of the most inconsiderable of European States. The English colonies in North America threw off the yoke of the mother country. The air was full of those ideas of liberty which a year or two later bore fruit in the French Revolution. A desire for independence spread among the Brazilians, and expressed itself by an ill-conceived rising in the province of Minas Geraes. But the movement was easily suppressed, and the Portuguese Government maintained for a little longer its sway over this noblest of colonial possessions.

During the earlier years of the French Revolution, Portugal was permitted to watch in undisturbed tranquillity the wild turmoils by which the other European nations were afflicted. At length it seemed to the Emperor Napoleon that the possession of the Portuguese kingdom, and especially of the Portuguese fleet, was a fitting step in his audacious progress to universal dominion. 1807 A.D. A French army entered Portugal; a single sentence in the Moniteur informed the world that “the House of Braganza had ceased to reign.” The French troops suffered so severely on their march, that ere they reached Lisbon they were incapable of offensive operations. But so timid was the Government, so thoroughly was the nation subdued by fear of Napoleon, that it was determined to offer no resistance. The capital of Portugal, with a population of three hundred thousand, and an army of fourteen thousand, opened its gates to fifteen hundred ragged and famishing Frenchmen, who wished to overturn the throne and degrade the country into a French province.

Before this humiliating submission was accomplished, the Royal Family had gathered together its most precious effects, and with a long train of followers,57 set sail for Brazil. The insane Queen was accompanied to the place of embarkation by the Prince Regent and the princes and princesses of the family, all in tears: the multitudes who thronged to look upon the departure lifted up their voices and wept. Men of heroic mould would have made themselves ready to hold the capital of the State or perish in its ruins; but the faint-hearted people of Lisbon were satisfied to bemoan themselves. When they had gazed their last at the receding ships, they hastened to receive their conquerors and supply their needs.

The presence of the Government hastened the industrial progress of Brazil. The Prince Regent (who in a few years became King) began his rule by opening the Brazilian ports to the commerce of all friendly nations.58 1815 A.D. Seven years later it was formally decreed that the colonial existence of Brazil should cease. She was now raised to the dignity of a kingdom united with Portugal under the same Crown. Her commerce and agriculture increased; she began to regard as her inferior the country of which she lately had been a dependency.

1820 A.D. The changed relations of the two States were displeasing to the people of Portugal. The Council by which the affairs of the kingdom were conducted became unpopular. The demand for constitutional government extended from Spain into Portugal. The Portuguese desired to see their King again in Lisbon, and called loudly for his return. The King consented to the wish of his people reluctantly; for besides other and graver reasons why he should not quit Brazil, his majesty greatly feared the discomforts of a sea-voyage. 1821 A.D. His son, the heir to his throne, became Regent in Brazil.

The Brazilians resented the departure of the King. The Portuguese meditated a yet deeper humiliation for the State whose recent acquisition of dignity was still an offence to them. There came an order from the Cortes that the Prince Regent also should return to Europe. The Brazilians were now eager that the tie which bound them to the mother country should be dissolved. The Prince Regent was urged to disregard the summons to return. After some hesitation he gave effect to the general wish, and intimated his purpose of remaining in Brazil. 1822 A.D. A few months later he was proclaimed Emperor, and the union of the two kingdoms ceased. Constitutional government was set up. But the administration of the Emperor was not sufficiently liberal to satisfy the wishes of his people. 1831 A.D. After nine years of deepening unpopularity, he resigned the crown in favour of his son, then a child five years of age, and now (1881), although still in middle life, the oldest monarch in the world.

Brazil covers almost one-half the South American Continent, and has therefore an area nearly equal to that of the eight States of Spanish origin by which she is bounded. She is as large as the British dominions in North America; she is larger than the United States, excluding the untrodden wastes of Alaska. One, and that not the largest, of her twenty provinces is ten times the size of England. Finally, her area is equal to five-sixths that of Europe.59 She has a sea-coast line of four thousand miles. She has a marvellous system of river communication; the Amazon and its tributaries alone are navigable for twenty-five thousand miles within Brazilian territory. Her mineral wealth is so ample that the governor of one of her provinces was wont, in religious processions, to ride a horse whose shoes were of gold; and the diamonds of the Royal Family are estimated at a value of three million sterling. Her soil and climate conspire to bestow upon her agriculture an opulence which is unsurpassed and probably unequalled. An acre of cotton yields in Brazil four times as much as an acre yields in the United States. Wheat gives a return of thirty to seventy fold; maize, of two hundred to four hundred fold; rice, of a thousand fold. Brazil supplies nearly one-half the coffee which the human family consumes. An endless variety of plants thrive in her genial soil. Sugar and tobacco, as well as cotton, coffee, and tea, are staple productions. Nothing which the tropics yield is wanting, and in many portions of the empire the vegetation of the temperate zones is abundantly productive. The energy of vegetable life is everywhere excessive. The mangrove seeds send forth shoots before they fall from the parent tree; the drooping branches of trees strike roots when they touch the ground, and enter upon independent existence; wood which has been split for fences hastens to put forth leaves; grasses and other plants intertwine and form bridges on which the traveller walks in safety.

But the scanty population of Brazil is wholly insufficient to subdue the enormous territory on which they have settled and make its vast capabilities conduce to the welfare of man. The highest estimate gives to Brazil a population of from eleven to twelve million.60 She has thus scarcely four inhabitants to every square mile of her surface, while England has upwards of four hundred. Vast forests still darken her soil, and the wild luxuriance of tropical undergrowth renders them well-nigh impervious to man. There are boundless expanses of wilderness imperfectly explored, still roamed over by untamed and often hostile Indians. Persistent but not eminently successful efforts have been made to induce European and now to induce Chinese immigration. The population continues, however, to increase at such a rate that it is larger by nearly two million than it was ten years ago. But these accessions are trivial when viewed in relation to the work which has still to be accomplished. It is said that no more than the one hundred and fiftieth part of the agricultural resources of Brazil has yet been developed or even revealed. The agricultural products of the country, in so far as the amount of these can be tested by the amount exported, do not exhibit any tendency to increase.61

Brazil is afflicted not merely by an insufficient population, but still more by the reluctance of her people to undergo the fatigues of agricultural labour in the exhausting heat of her sultry plains. The coloured population choose other occupations, and flock to the cities. Once they were held by compulsion to field-work. Slavery was maintained in Brazil after it had been abandoned by all other Christian States. Not till 1871 was Brazil shamed out of the iniquitous system. In that year it was enacted that the children of slave women should be free – subject, however, to an apprenticeship of twenty-one years, during which they must labour for the owners of their mothers. Since that law was passed, there has been voluntary emancipation to a considerable extent; and the slaves in Brazil, who numbered at one time two and a half million, are now about one million.62 The freedmen shun field-work, and the places which they quit are scarcely filled by immigration or natural increase. Agricultural progress is thus frustrated – an evil which will probably be felt still more acutely as the emancipation of the negroes draws towards its completion. No sufficient remedy for this evil can be hoped for so long as any remnants of slavery linger on the soil.

The Brazilian Legislature is elected by the people, the qualification of a voter being an annual income of twenty pounds. Three candidates for the office of Senator are chosen by each constituency, and the Emperor determines which of the three shall gain the appointment. The members of the Lower House are chosen by indirect election. Every thirty voters choose an elector, and the electors thus chosen appoint the deputies. The exercise of the right of voting is compulsory; neglect to vote is punished by the infliction of penalties. Each of the twenty provinces into which the empire is divided has its own Legislature, with a President appointed by the general Government. The powers exercised by the provincial governments are necessarily large.

The constitution confers upon the Emperor a “moderating power,” which enables him, when he chooses, to frustrate the wishes of his Chambers. He may dismiss a minister who has large majorities in both Houses; he may withhold his sanction from measures which have been enacted by the Legislature. Brazil has no hereditary nobility; but there is a lavish distribution of distinctions which endure only for the lifetime of the recipient. It is held that the power of bestowing these coveted honours invests the Emperor with a measure of authority which is not unattended with danger to the public liberties.

But the career of the Brazilian Empire has been marked in large measure by tranquillity and progress, and the masses of the people manifest no desire for change. They have suffered from foreign war63 and from domestic strife; but their sufferings have been trivial when compared with those of the Spanish States which adjoin them. Thus far their quiet and unadventurous Government has given them repose, and thus far they are satisfied. Three-fourths of the Brazilian people are of mixed race, the leading elements in which are Indian and Negro. They are profoundly ignorant; for although compulsory education has been enacted, its progress is yet inconsiderable.64 What the awakened intellect of the Brazilian nation may in future years demand is beyond human forecast. It is not probable that the political combinations which an ignorant and indolent people have accepted at the hand of their rulers will continue to satisfy when the national mind casts aside its apathy. Brazil will be more fortunate than other States if she attain to a stable political condition otherwise than by the familiar path of civil contention and bloodshed.

It has been said by Mr. Bright that there is no event in history, ancient or modern, which for grandeur and for permanence can compare with the discovery of the American Continent by Christopher Columbus. This is a large claim, but indisputably a just one. The discovery of America ushered in an epoch wholly different from any which had preceded it. Nearly one-third of the area of our world was practically worthless to the human family – wandered over by savages who supported their unprofitable lives by the slaughter of animals scarcely more savage than themselves. Suddenly the lost continent is found, and its incalculable wealth is added to the sum of human possessions. Europe supported with difficulty, by her rude processes of agriculture, even the scanty population which she contained; here were homes and maintenance sufficient for all. Europe was governed by methods yet more barbarous than her agriculture; here was an arena worthy of the great experiment of human freedom on which the best of her people longed to enter. Europe was committed to many old and injurious institutions – the legacy of the darkest ages – no one of which could be overthrown save by wasteful strife; here, free from the embarrassments which time and error had created, there could be established the institutions which the wants of new generations called for, and Europe could inform herself of their quality before she proceeded to their adoption. The human family was very poor; its lower classes were crushed down by poverty into wretchedness and vice. At once the common heritage was enormously increased, and possibilities of well-being not dreamed of before were opened to all. The brave heart of Columbus beat high as he looked out from the deck of his little ship upon the shores of a new world, and felt with solemn thankfulness that God had chosen him to accomplish a great work. We recognize in this lonely, much-enduring man, the grandest human benefactor whom the race has ever known. Behind him lay centuries of oppression and suffering, and ignorance and debasement. Before him, unseen by the eye of man, there stretched out, as the result of his triumph, the slow but steadfast evolution of influences destined to transform the world.

It fell to three European States, whose united area was scarcely larger than one-fortieth part of the American Continents, to complete the work which Columbus had begun; to preside over and direct the vast revolution which his work rendered inevitable. England, Spain, and Portugal were able to possess themselves of the lands which lie between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and they assumed the responsibility of shaping out the future of the nations by which those lands must ultimately be peopled. They entered upon the momentous task under the influence of motives which were exclusively selfish. A magnificent prize had come into their hands; their sole concern was to extract from it the largest possible advantage to themselves. These enormous possessions were to remain for ever colonial dependencies; their inhabitants were to remain for ever in the imperfect condition of colonists – men who labour partly for their own benefit, but still more for that of the mother country. The European owners of America were alike in the selfishness of their aims, in their utter misconception of the trust which had devolved upon them. But they differed widely in regard to the methods by which they sought to give effect to their purposes; and the difference of result has been correspondingly great.

The American colonies of England were founded by the best and wisest men she possessed – men imbued with a passionate love of liberty, and resolute in its defence. These men went forth to find homes in the New World, and to maintain themselves by honest labour. England laid unjust restrictions upon their commerce, and suppressed their manufactures, that she herself might profit by the supply of their wants. But so long as her merchants gathered in the gain of colonial traffic, she suffered the government of the colonies to be guided by the free spirit of her own institutions. The colonists conducted their own public affairs, and gained thus the skill and moderation which the work of self-government demands. In course of years they renounced allegiance to the mother country, and founded an independent government, under which no privileged class exists, and the equality of human rights is asserted and maintained. To-day the English colonies form one of the greatest nations on the Earth, with a population of fifty million, educated, in the enjoyment of every political right, more amply endowed than any other people have ever been with the elements of material well-being.

In the progress by which the English colonies in America have advanced to the commanding position which they now occupy, they have given forth lessons of inestimable value to Europe. At a very early period in her history there came back from America influences powerful to overthrow the evils which men had fled there to avoid. The liberty of conscience over which the early Pilgrims never ceased to exult, not only drew many to follow them, but emboldened those who remained for the successful assertion of their rights. The vindication by the colonists of their political independence quickened all free impulses in Europe, and prepared the fall of despotic government. Europe watched the rising greatness of a nation in which all men had part in framing the laws under which they lived; in which perfect freedom and equality of opportunity were enjoyed by all; in which religion was becomingly upheld by the spontaneous liberality of the individual worshippers; in which standing armies were practically unknown, and the substance of the people was not wasted on military preparations. Throughout the long and bitter contest in which Western Europe vanquished despotism, the example of America confirmed the growing belief that liberty was essential to the welfare of man, and strengthened every patriot heart for the efforts and the sacrifices which the noble enterprise demanded.

The history of Spanish America presents, in nearly every respect, a striking and gloomy contrast to that of the Northern Continent. The Spanish conquerors were men of unsurpassed capability in battle; but they were cruel, superstitious, profoundly ignorant. They went to the New World with the purpose of acquiring by force or by fraud the gold and precious stones in which the continent was rich, and then of hastening homeward to live splendidly in Spain. In their greedy search, they trampled down the native population with a murderous cruelty which is a reproach to the human name. The natives, on the other hand, were oppressed by the home Government. Their commerce was fettered; no influence was permitted to them in the conduct of their own public affairs; no action was taken to dispel the ignorance which brooded over the ill-fated continent. They learned to hate the Government which thus abused its trust; and when they rose in arms for its overthrow, they disclosed an untamed ferocity which the conquerors themselves scarcely surpassed. Their half century of independence has been filled with destructive civil wars, which have hindered and almost forbidden progress.

In Spanish hands this fair region has failed to contribute, in any substantial measure, to the welfare of mankind. This portion of the gift which Columbus brought fell into incapable hands, and has been rendered almost worthless. It may reasonably be hoped that a better future is in store for Spanish America; but its past must be regarded as a gigantic failure. Its people have taught the world nothing. They have served the world by a history which is rich in warning but void of example.